


Romancing the Flame

by interlude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Treasure Hunting, how many 80s adventure film references can I shove into one fic?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14598834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: When Emori's brother is held hostage in exchange for a priceless, mythical jewel called the Flame, she teams up with sarcastic thief and treasure hunter, John Murphy.But someone else is after the Flame too, and it's a race to find the lost city of Polis and the jewel hidden inside.To get there first, Emori and John will have to overcome booby traps, mercenaries, and their mutual mistrust of each other.--aka my ode to the classic action/adventure films of the 80s/90s, packed full of as many references and tropes as I can managethe title is a reference to the film "Romancing the Stone"





	1. Chapter One: The Key

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to the ever lovely infernalandmortal for editing
> 
> this fic has been a lot of fun to plan and write, and I hope it's as fun for people to read - and hopefully it's exactly the kind of light-hearted, silly romance the Memori fandom needs right now
> 
> this story is purposely modeled after classic action/adventure tales like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Romancing the Stone because I've always loved the genre - that means references and shoutouts and tropes galore!

 

**Chapter One: The Key**

 

The Blue Ridge Mountains rise high above the Virginia horizon. It’s early fall, and the air is cold and crisp with the coming winter. It hasn’t yet snowed; the mountains are still the vivid mix of greens and blues that inspired their name. From a distance, they look like an oil painting, with great, blue strokes to mark the peaks.

A dark green Jeep winds its way along a mountain road, moving steadily upwards. Inside, the atmosphere is colder than the outside air and half as pleasant. The three occupants – two men, one tall and gangly, one with what seems like a permanently annoyed expression, and a beautiful, young woman – sit in silence as they drive.

The frigidness radiates from the passenger seat where the young woman sits, toying with something in her pocket and staring moodily ahead. Her expression hovers on the edge of both excitement and anger, though the latter might just be a permanent disposition. Her features are soft and feminine, round cheeks and large, doe-like eyes, but her eyes hold a harshness that seems at odds with the rest of her face.

The man with the sour expression glances at her out of the corner of his eyes as he drives, then makes eye contact with the man in the backseat through the rearview mirror. The taller man shrugs, as if to say there’s not much they can do about it, and returns to his book.

The driver’s frown deepens; he shifts in his seat to a new position, then back again to where he started. He drums out a beat on the steering wheel to help fill the silence, and starts to hum under his breath along with the quietly playing radio.

They continue on like that for a few more miles, before the driver pulls the Jeep off the road and into the trees without warning. The ride grows rockier on the uneven terrain, and the woman has to brace herself against the window when they hit a particularly large bump, but the Jeep has little trouble pushing forward into the forest.

Eventually, they come to a steep, rocky incline, and the Jeep pulls to a stop.

The driver hops out of the car. “We’ll have to continue the rest of the way on foot,” he tells his companions as they follow. Together, the three of them grab a few things from the trunk – a camera, a shovel, various other pieces of equipment stuffed into two small bags – and, gear in hand, they begin their climb.

The incline is easier than it looks, though the woman still struggles a bit, clearly unused to the activity. The two men pull her up, and, once she’s on flat ground again, she pushes them roughly away from her and wipes at the dirt on her clothes. The shorter man makes a face at her, but says nothing, glancing again at the taller one. His companion, much like he had in the car, only shrugs good-naturedly.

With a huff, the shorter man takes the lead.

It’s several hours later when they finally stop in front of a large, empty clearing. The sun has begun to descend, and the trees cast large shadows over the three of them. The woman, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat from their hike, pulls a flashlight from her bag and turns it on. It isn’t quite dark enough yet to need it, but it helps a bit in the dim light. She searches the clearing in front of them, waving the beam back and forth.

“Where is it?” she asks. Her exhaustion from the hike makes her words sharp.

“Right here,” the shorter man says, stepping forward. He kicks at something on the ground. The clunk of his boot hitting against wood echoes through the clearing. The woman shines her flashlight at his foot. The light reveals a long, wooden plank built into the ground. It’s rotting with age and falling apart, but very clearly man-made.

“Foundations of a house,” the man continues, gesturing down at it. “This is all that’s left of the place.”

The woman looks up at him, lips pursed as if she’s eaten something sour. With a huff, she stomps forward into the ghostly remains of the old village. A few steps forward, she kicks roughly at a mound of dirt. The pile crumbles, and the cascading earth reveals the shattered porcelain remains of what must have once been a vase or pot.

It would likely be a great discovery for anyone else, overlooked as it has been for years out here, but the woman is unimpressed. She moves on, kicking at another mound, and then another, with little regard for preserving anything hidden within.

“How do you know this is it?” the taller man asks as the two of them watch the woman search. She’s growing increasingly agitated, kicking harder at the ground as if her anger will help unearth what she’s looking for.

The other man shrugs. “We had a map,” he explains. “And the leftover foundations prove there was at least something here at one point. Plus this.” He walks forward, stopping at the center of the clearing, then pulls out his own flashlight. Clicking it on, he points it at the ground. The other two join him and watch as he clears the sticks and leaves and brush away to reveal a large metal disc – almost like a manhole cover, but twice as large – set into the ground. In the center sits the engraving of an infinity symbol.

The whole thing seems out of place and alien in the forest.

“That’s their symbol,” the shorter man explains, his light trained on the engraving. “But,” he adds, glancing at the woman, “like I said – there’s nothing here anymore. We looked everywhere and didn’t find anything.”

She doesn’t even look at him. Her eyes are locked on the symbol, expression hungry; the shorter man thinks she looks a lot like a prowling mountain cat eyeing its prey.

“You didn’t have the key,” she says dramatically.

When she doesn’t continue, the shorter man rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine, be cryptic as fuck.”

The taller man nudges his arm and shoots him a disapproving face when he looks at him. His companion scowls back, but dutifully keeps quiet.

Their attention is drawn back to the woman when she kneels down and pulls something from her pocket. They lean forward to see it clearly.

It’s a metal coin, slightly larger than a quarter, and completely blank except for the same infinity symbol as the one in front of them. Instead of being engraved into the metal, however, this symbol is protruding.

The woman places it on top of the symbol on the ground. It fits perfectly, slotting into place like a puzzle piece. She turns it, and the symbol on the ground turns with it. There’s a click and then the rumbling of tumblers shifting and unlocking beneath them. The metal disc swings downwards suddenly. The two men jump. Now open, it reveals a long tunnel down into the earth. Suspended near the top is an old, rotting rope ladder.

It’s a bunker hidden in plain sight.

“Holy shit,” the shorter man breathes. For the first time, there’s no annoyance on his face. He’s grinning.

The three of them shine their lights down into the darkness. A few meters down, they can see the bunker floor.

“I told you,” the woman says smugly, pocketing the coin again. “You weren’t looking in the right place.”

“We didn’t know to look for this,” the shorter man argues. “I didn’t even think they had the technology for something like this. This is – shit. It’s like something out of a Tomb Raider game.”

The taller man grins. “Are you Lara?”

The shorter man shoves his arm. “Shut up,” he growls, but his voice is still bright with excitement, the words shaped by his grin.

The woman locks eyes with him, then nods down at the hole. “After you.”

“What happened to ladies first?” he asks. She glares at him, and he raises his hands in surrender, the flashlight spinning up into the darkening sky with the movement. “Alright, alright. But you’re paying extra if I get maimed by some kind of booby trap.”

“Just go,” she hisses.

The man tucks his flashlight into the back of his pants and grabs hold of the ladder. He gives it a few experimental tugs. It’s seen better years, but it appears to be holding, at least. And since they didn’t think to bring any ropes with them, it will have to do. Slowly, he lowers himself into the hole and starts his descent. Two twin beams of light shine down on him to light his way.

He reaches the floor and hesitates before placing his feet on it, his earlier joke about possible booby traps playing out vividly in his head. But his curiosity, and the promise of money, is too strong to ignore.

Nothing happens. He breathes a sigh of relief.

“What do you see?” the taller man calls from above.

“Nothing yet,” he yells back, pulling his flashlight out again. “Gimme a minute!”

He flickers the flashlight on and examines his surroundings. The bunker opens up wider than expected. It’s large enough to house several people and appears to have been prepared to do so. There are tables and what look like beds along the walls. In the far corner, there’s an area reserved for cooking and storing food. From where he stands, he can just barely make out tidy rows of dust-covered jars lined along the shelves.

He almost expects to find skeletons, but there aren’t any. Anyone who once used this place left before they died – and clearly no one has been here since. The thick layer of dust and cobwebs that covers everything speaks to the years this place has gone untouched.

There’s a thud behind him as the young woman drops down into the bunker. The taller man follows much more slowly behind her, clearly hesitant to put his full weight on the rotted rope.

The woman pushes roughly past the shorter man and starts searching the items left behind, tossing things aside carelessly after she looks them over. Her movements kick up large clouds of dust. She coughs roughly, then pulls her jacket up over her face and continues.

The shorter man isn’t sure what she’s searching for – treasure maybe. He thinks that would be his only reason to seek out an ancient underground bunker. Unfortunately for her, there doesn’t seem to be anything of much value here. Either the people took it when they fled the village or it never existed to begin with.

He starts his own search, keeping an eye out for the glint of gold, moving the items around much more carefully than the woman had. The beam of his flashlight catches on something interesting, and he stops.

The wall farthest from the entrance is covered in paintings. Half of the wall depicts some long-forgotten story – he steps closer to examine the scenes.

A group of people stand in front of a city, the familiar infinity symbol painted above them. A woman appears, painted in bright, vivid red instead of the black that makes up the rest of the mural. After that, there is chaos – though it’s hard to parse out exactly what happens in the simplistic style of the paintings, it’s clear the red woman stands at the heart of it. In the final scene, a smaller group of people flee the city. The red woman stays behind.

It must be a retelling of the people’s history, though it’s hard to understand without the proper context. He turns to the second half of the wall. Instead of a story, it's covered in a large painted map. There’s no ‘x’ to mark the spot, but it feels like a treasure map all the same, the end destination marked with the familiar infinity symbol. He glances back at the mural, then again at the map, staring at the familiar symbol it leads to.

It’s the city, he realizes. It’s Polis.

His excitement is so strong he can taste it.

He glances around at the others for the camera, but it’s clear neither of them carried it down. It must be above ground with the rest of their gear. He heads quickly towards the exit, and, as he grabs hold of the rope ladder and gets a foot on it, the other man turns to look at him in confusion.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m grabbing the camera,” he explains as he starts to climb. The rope ladder strains a bit, but it holds his weight well enough to pull himself up. “To take pictures of the map.” It doesn’t take long to climb the rope. In a matter of minutes, the man reaches the top and pulls himself out of the hole, hurrying quickly towards the pile of gear they’ve left above ground.

Back in the bunker, the woman startles at the man’s words. The porcelain vase she’d been holding drops to the ground, where it shatters with a crash. She doesn’t even spare the pieces a second glance as she approaches the painted wall. When her eyes catch on the map, she gasps. For the first time during the trip, she looks happy.

The man in front of her studies the map with obvious curiosity. He doesn’t even glance at her as she steps up behind him. Or when she reaches for her lower back and removes the small, silver pistol hidden there beneath her heavy jacket. Or as she aims it carefully at his head.

He’s dead before he hits the ground.

_One down,_ she thinks.

 

 


	2. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Main characters are introduced, deals are made, and plots are started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my love to infernalandmortal for editing and being just as excited about this fic as I am!

There was something about seedy bars that made Emori reckless. She’d like to blame it on the alcohol, but she’d only had one beer so far, and she knew she could drink half the men in this bar under the table. Maybe it was just the general sleaziness of the place – the atmosphere of crime and depravity hanging heavy over everything left the implication that you could get away with anything while inside.

Out in the real world, the law was a real threat, and one that Emori was cautious of. She’d long since learned the importance of staying inconspicuous and hidden, and normally she avoided unnecessary attention – but here she knew for a fact there was an illegal poker game unraveling in the back room, and that made her feel safe.

Normal grifts called for days of preparation and careful execution, but bar grifts were easy. They only required that she keep the mark drunk and horny enough not to notice what was happening – or just that she win the inevitable fight that broke out. No one was going to call the police in a place like this, after all, and she could handle a few bruises and cuts for the sake of some extra cash.

She does a lap around the place on her way back from the bathroom. By the time she reaches her table, she’s already zeroed in on at least three different opportunities.

Otan is exactly where she left him, staring morosely down into his own drink like the loser she often tells him he is. He looks up when she sits down.

“Hey.” She jerks her head towards the back corner. “Check out the dart game.”

Her brother follows her gaze to the two men in the midst of a game, then looks back at her with a deeper frown. Her excitement must be obvious, because he sighs heavily. “Hustling? Really?”

“It’ll be fun,” she says, her voice sing-song. She pokes at his shoulder, but Otan shrugs her off, grunting unenthusiastically in reply. “Come on, you know we’ll win.” Emori herself can probably hit the dartboard from where they sit right now. Otan, she knows, would hit the bullseye.

“I’m not worried about winning,” he argues. “I’m worried you’re going to start a fight, and we’ll get kicked out before I can finish my drink.”

Emori deftly grabs his drink from his hands and downs the entire thing. The whiskey is cheap and biting; it burns the back of her throat as it goes down. She slams the empty glass back on the table with a loud clink, and roughly wipes her mouth with the back of her gloved hand.

“There, drink finished.”

Otan glares at her. She smiles sweetly back at him.

They stare each other down, Otan looking for all the world like the human embodiment of a rain cloud and Emori bright and grinning, unwavering. Finally, with the kind of disappointed certainty that comes with having lost hundreds of similar arguments before, Otan sighs deeply in resignation and kneads at the rough, scarred skin of his forehead.

“Fine,” he says, and Emori laughs, delighted.

“It’ll be fun,” she promises as she tugs him out of his seat and towards the game. “Besides, it’s been a while since we’ve treated ourselves. We could use some extra cash.”

“You’re buying me another whiskey with it,” Otan tells her, then falls quiet as they reach the two men.

It’s easy to slip into the roles. They fit as comfortably as well-worn shoes.

“Come on, Em,” Otan says, gently tugging back the arm Emori has a hold of. She follows the movement, exaggerating her stumble a bit before she rights herself against her brother. “These guys are already playing.”

“Come on, O! I want to play!” she whines, slurring her words in a convincing charade of drunkenness.

The men pause their game and glance over at them.

Emori smiles at them and waves lazily. “Hey, you guys want to play with us?”

The two men look at each other in silent debate, and then eye Otan and her speculatively. They’re hesitant to accept Otan, she can tell, as people usually are – his sour expression and bulk might not be unusual in a place like this, but it certainly doesn’t do him any favors when making friends – but she’s laying the drunk, ditzy charm on well enough that they’re interested. One of them drags his eyes up and down her body.

“Ignore my dumb brother,” she slurs, emphasizing the last word. “I think you guys look fun! I want to have some fun!”

Otan tugs gently on her arm again. “They’re not interested, Em.”

“We didn’t say that,” the one eyeing her like a snack says quickly, and Emori hides a triumphant grin. Hook, line, and sinker.

He turns to at his opponent for confirmation, and the other man nods. “Yeah, we’d be up for a game.” His grin makes her skin crawl. “I’m Emerson. This is Dax.”

“I’m Emily,” she says, then slaps an uncoordinated hand against Otan’s chest. “This is Oscar.” 

She steps closer to Emerson because the hungry way he eyes her makes him the better target. “I don’t know how to play,” she tells him, pitching her volume as if she’s trying to whisper but too drunk to manage it.

And he buys it. His grin stretches wider. “Don’t worry,” he assures her, placing an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll teach you.” He strokes down her arm, lower and lower, then switches to her back. It creeps dangerously close to her ass, and it's only years of practice that keep her smile in place. If they weren’t about to rob him blind, she’d have decked him the minute he touched her. Instead, she just giggles and leans in closer.

It’s all almost too easy.

 

* * *

 

Emori and Otan return to their motel room that night with their pockets heavier than they left. They hadn’t been able to raise the bet very high – Emori’s thinks the men had grown suspicious despite their flawless act – but Emori had treated herself to Mr. Grabby Hands’ wallet before they left.

“What’d I tell you?” she boasts as Otan unlocks the door. “It was fun, right?”

“Sure,” is all Otan says, but he’s grinning.

Emori is so high on their success that it takes her a moment to realize what happens when they enter the room. Something grabs her and shoves her face-first into the wall beside the door. Her nose throbs with the impact, and she has enough clarity to hope it isn’t broken, before she manages to take in the rest of the situation.

There are people in their room. One of them, clearly a man much stronger and larger than she is, has her pinned securely against the wall. She hears struggling behind her, but all she can see is the ugly paisley wallpaper of the room.

“Get off of me!” she shouts, straining against the arms holding her down. “Otan?! Otan!”

“Emori!” she hears him shout, before the distinct thud of someone getting socked in the face. She hopes Otan’s getting one up on their attackers, but she has a horrible feeling that it’s Otan who’s been hit. Her suspicious are confirmed when she hears her brother groan. Fear settles in her gut. She tries harder to fight back.

“You didn’t really think I wouldn’t find you, did you?”

The familiar voice coats her ears like tar, heavy, thick and vile. She freezes.

“Did you, Emori?” Baylis continues, and she chokes down a whimper. Even if she can’t see him, she can picture him perfectly in her mind – the cocky, feral grin, the hateful eyes. He probably still has the scar on his temple too. Baylis laughs, and she flinches. Her nose throbs sharply when she pushes it further into the wall. “Come on, we all know your brother’s an idiot, but you’re smarter than that.”

She wants to spit an insult. It sits on her tongue like ready ammunition, only the pistol’s jammed. She can’t get her mouth to say the words. They’d known it was a risk when they left, but they’d thought it was worth it. For months, she’d worried Baylis would find them again, and when it hadn’t happened, she’d grown passive in her sense of safety. She’d stopped worrying. She’d forgotten to be scared.

Now, the weight of that terror comes back all at once and locks her limbs tight and her jaw shut. She feels like a rabbit cowering in a trap, and she hates that almost more than the man behind her. Almost, but not quite.

“Turn her around,” Baylis orders, and the hands yank her from the wall and spin her around so roughly her rattled head spins. There’s definitely blood dripping from her nose.

Her imagination had been spot on. Sure enough, the scar is visible on his temple with his hair gelled back the way he always wears it, but she can’t even enjoy it – not when she sees the gun on his hip or the two large, heavily-armed men flanking him. Two others have Otan pinned, one with his arm tight around Otan’s neck. Her brother’s face is turning red with the strain.

He locks eyes with her and she reads her fear mirrored in them. Two men on Otan, one on her, two others waiting to act, and Baylis.

They’re fucked.

“Well?” Baylis barks. The man who has a hold of her tightens his grip. His nails dig into the skin of her arms. “You have anything to say?”

She tries to voice an apology, but her mouth fumbles around the shape of it. The words get lost somewhere in her throat. Baylis waits, his eyes locked on hers. Emori licks her lips and tries again. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Baylis mocks. “For what? For running away? For stealing my money? For this?” He gestures at the scar on his face.

“All of it,” she gasps. Anything to please him. She’d gotten in his good graces once before; maybe she can do it again. “I’m sorry for all of it. I’ll make up for it. I’ll – I’ll-“

Otan squeaks, and her eyes dart to him. It’s too small a sound for a man as large as her brother, but he looks small now. The man holding his neck is squeezing it tighter, and her brother flounders like a fish caught on the shoreline as he struggles for breath. She can see his fingers dancing and twitching in the air for something to grab onto, but he’s too well-pinned. He clutches uselessly at open air.

“I’ll pay you back!” she shouts, desperate.

“You will?” Baylis steps close to her. He’s at least a foot and a half taller than her; she has to crane her neck to look up at his face. But then he crouches, and she has a bewildered second to wonder what he’s doing before he digs a hand into her boots, searching. She tries to not to squirm at the feeling.

He finds the wad of cash stuffed in her right boot, and the knife stashed in her left, and then Mr. Grabby Hands’ wallet in her jacket pocket. He pockets the knife and thumbs through the wallet and the ball of cash. Then he does the same to Otan, pulling out the knives he keeps in each boot and his own wad of money.

“See, we already found the pathetic bit of cash you had stashed in your bags here. And with this,” he waves the money he’s holding, “and whatever you hid in the car you stole, I know you don’t have nearly enough to pay me back.”

“I’ll get you more money. You know I can.” It was, after all, why he’d brought her in in the first place.

“Oh, I know you will,” Baylis assures her, pocketing the cash. He pulls a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and unfolds it, then holds it in front of her face.

The word “Polis” is written on it, which means nothing to her. Below it someone has drawn an infinity symbol.

She can’t help the incredulous laugh that bubbles out of her. “I can’t get you  _ that _ ,” she argues.

Baylis slaps her. Her nose protests loudly. She can see her blood on Baylis’s hand as he pulls it back. His grin is gone; now he just looks angry.

“It’s a symbol, you bitch,” he hisses. “For an ancient city called Polis. There’s a jewel there that’s worth more than the fucking queen of England. It’s called the Flame. That’s how you’re going to pay me back.”

It takes her a moment to connect the dots; she blames the distracting throbbing of her face. “You’re sending us on a goddamn treasure hunt?”

“Not both of you. I’m keeping your brother so you don’t run off on me again. You bring me the Flame, and I’ll give him back to you, safe and sound.”

He’s offering her a way to freedom, but it smells like bullshit.

“I need Otan’s help,” she tries. “You need to let him come with me.”

Baylis sneers at her. “You think I don’t know who the brains of the operation is? You don’t need him to find it.”

“There’s no way I can find this. Baylis, please,” she begs, “let me pay you back some other way.”

He moves towards her, and she thinks he’s going to slap her again. She braces herself for the hit, but instead, he grabs her face roughly in his hand and squeezes. His rough fingers dig into her cheeks. She can feel them pressing against the bone. “You either bring me back the Flame, or you find some other way to get me as much money as the queen of fucking England. Or you run off and let your brother die. Your choice.”

Emori locks eyes with Otan again. It’s easy to make her choice. “Fine! Fine, I’ll find it. But you have to give me a lead.”

Baylis lets go of her face, and she wishes she had an arm free to scrub the feel of him off her skin. She wants to throw up.

“I gave you a lead. Polis.”

“I need something more than that,” she pleads. “Look, if you want to get this jewel, then you need to give me something more.”

Baylis considers her as he folds the paper back up and tucks it in his pocket. Then he nods. “I got the information from a man named Murphy in The Dead Zone. Look for him.”

She thinks that’s it, but then he pulls out her knife. There’s no way in hell he’s handing it back to her, and that worries her.

“One more thing,” he says. Her stomach churns with fear, writhing like a pit of snakes. She tries to stop herself from trembling, but it’s hopeless. He’s already seen it anyways; there’s no use in playing brave. Baylis gestures with her knife at the scar she gave him. “I’m gonna repay you for this.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the idea that Baylis was the one to give Emori her cheek scar was absolutely stolen (with love) from infernalandmortal


	3. The Dead Zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our main characters meet at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to the absolutely lovely Infernalandmortal for editing. :)

**Chapter Three: The Dead Zone**

 

The Dead Zone looks less like a bar than it does a makeshift shelter from a post-apocalyptic world. It sits tucked away in the shadows of a dark and rarely traveled street, looking just days - or maybe a particularly strong breeze - away from falling apart completely. Cracks splinter its walls. The paint has chipped off in patches and clearly hasn’t been thought about since. Inside, the bar is full of hole-ridden booths, mismatched tables, and faulty wiring that occasionally cuts out completely.

Aside from a meager selection of food and drinks ranging from mediocre to downright disgusting, The Dead Zone offers the promise of privacy and anonymity – and it is for that reason alone that it still maintains a loyal group of customers.

It’s one of the best places Murphy’s found to pick up odd jobs. It probably deals in more shady business than almost anywhere else in the city – second only to The Conclave several streets over, which takes the prize both for highest crime rate and oddest bar name. He’d tried The Conclave just twice, before realizing he valued his life too much to frequent a place where someone might stab him just for the hell of it.

Tonight, though, he’s actually more interested in drinking than he is in securing a job. He takes a seat at the bar and keeps mostly to himself, only talking occasionally when Gina, the bartender – and the ex of an ex-friend – tries to pull him into conversation. Eventually, she recognizes it for a lost cause and leaves him to drink his shitty beer in silence.

There’s a pool game going on in the corner that catches his attention, mostly because one of the two men is performing the sloppiest hustle Murphy’s even seen. His opponent, a heavyset man with a handlebar moustache and a rapidly receding hairline, isn’t oblivious to what’s happening. Murphy estimates about two more moves before he starts throwing punches. Gina, noticing the growing potential for a bar fight, moves to clean a spot on the bar closest to the pool table, and stands there, methodically circling her rag over the same spot as she watches the men out of the corner of her eye.

Looking forward to some entertainment, Murphy angles himself towards the men and waits for the inevitable chaos.

“I give them ten minutes before Bald Spot stabs Bad Teeth with the knife he has tucked in his boot.”

Murphy prides himself on not spooking easily, but he nearly drops his beer at the sudden voice. There’s a young woman perched on the bar stool next to him, eyes on the pool game. If he was a more superstitious man, he might have thought her a ghost for how silently she’d moved up beside him. Out of habit, he subtly reaches a hand into his jacket pocket and reassures himself that his wallet is still there.

She must feel his eyes on her, because she turns to look at him and grins, and he’s treated to a full view of the tattoo stretching across the left side of her face. On the opposite cheek, a cut curves under her eye in the shape of a fish hook, fleshly pink and ugly looking. The uneven blue stitches are just barely visible in the dim light. Despite her small size and pretty face, she fits easily into the unsavory atmosphere of the bar; he doesn’t doubt for a second she could hold her own in a fight.

“You willing to put money on that bet?” he asks.

“I only gamble with my life, never my money,” she says with a grin.

That’s a good line, he thinks, and then remembers where he’s heard it from. “Is that from The Mummy?”

She laughs, and he can tell it’s an honest laugh because he’s caught her off guard – less flirty than the previous one, less poised, more of a snort. It’s cute. “Alright, you caught me,” she says, raising her hands up in front of her for a brief moment before hiding them back under the table. He catches sight of her left hand before she does; it’s oddly shaped, wrapped up in a loose-fitting glove or mitten, and he has a few seconds to be curious before she’s talking again. “It was on TV last night.”

“It’s a good line,” he offers. She really is pretty – and she just quoted a cheesy action movie to try and flirt with him. Murphy knows he doesn’t have a great track record with women – Ontari certainly not excluded – but he decides to try his luck anyway. “How about the loser buys the winner a drink?”

She hums, contemplating, eyeing the pool table again before she looks back at him. She taps a finger on her chin, making quite the show of thinking it through, though her amusement is obvious. “I suppose I could agree to that. What are you betting, exactly?”

Murphy glances back over at the table. Bald Spot is getting pretty red in the face, and Murphy can tell the man’s knuckles around his pole are white even from here. “I say Baldy starts stabbing in two minutes.”

“Alright,” she allows, and pulls a cellphone from her pocket, placing it on the table for both of them to see. Cracks cover the screen like an intricate spider-web; there’s a strip of duct tape along one of the sides that’s starting to fray. She pulls up a timer and starts the clock, grins at him, and turns to watch the game play out.

Murphy can’t help glancing at her out of the corner of his eyes, tracing her profile and the strange tattoo. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything.

Two minutes pass and nothing happens. The game continues, even as Bald Spot’s temper increases. His moves get sloppier in his anger, and his component gets better and better, dropping the pretense of a hustle completely.

At the four-minute mark, Bald Spot throws his pool stick to the side. It clangs off the table and falls to the floor. Gina tenses from her spot at the bar. The man starts shouting, waving a finger wildly at his opponent and throwing obscenities like projectiles.

Murphy doesn’t wait to see if the knife actually makes an appearance – or even if punches start flying like he’d been looking forward to earlier. He turns to face the woman and glances at the timer still running on her phone.

“Well, we’re past the two-minute mark,” he says. “Guess that means you win.”

“The knife hasn’t come out yet.”

“I think Gina’s going to kick them out before it can.” He gestures towards Gina, who has abandoned her towel at the bar counter and is heading quickly towards the men with all the ferocity of a hurricane. 

“It didn’t take ten minutes,” the woman argues as she slips her phone back into her pocket. “So, I think I still owe you a drink.”

“I’d never turn down a free drink, but I think we’re going to have to wait until our bartender gets back.” Gina is currently shoving Bald Spot towards the door. She’s stronger than she looks. “Can I get a name in the meantime?”

“Emori.”

“John,” he replies, offering up his first name, even though he hardly ever uses it. He can’t think of a single person in this bar who knows him as anything other than Murphy – not even Gina, who’s known him the longest – but he’s not trying to pick Emori up as a job. He’s trying to pick her up as a date. Maybe it’s a good idea to make the distinction clear.

“Nice to meet you, John,” she says, and whatever his reason for giving it, his first name sounds nice coming from her mouth.

“Yeah, you too,” he says for lack of anything better to say. “Nice to meet you too, I mean,” he fumbles, and he’d curse himself for looking like an idiot if Emori didn’t look so pleasantly amused by it.

Emori turns to wave Gina over as she returns to the bar and orders them each a beer. When the drinks arrive, she leans in closer. He follows her lead, ducking his head towards hers. “Want to go somewhere a little more private?” she asks, gesturing her head first towards Gina and then towards a dimly lit table in the back of the room. Her breath is warm against his cheek. Unable to say anything, he nods. Her grin is devious and addictive as she grabs his hand and pulls him away from the bar. He wants to taste it. He wants to feel the shape of it against his mouth.

The table she takes them to is certainly private. It’s out of sight of most of the bar, and so dark that it’s hard for him to see the woman across from him clearly. It’s small, too; their knees bump against each other once they’re seated.

Murphy has a moment to wonder if he’s going to get lucky right here and now, if that’s why she’d picked such a secluded spot, before Emori says, “An acquaintance told me you have information about a jewel called the Flame.”

It feels like he’s been punched in the stomach; the pleasant anticipation that had been buzzing under his skin vanishes, along with Emori’s own pleasant grin. Now that the jig is up, her face is hard.

“Fuckin’ of course,” he mutters, taking a deep swig of his drink. It should have figured that a pretty girl was only talking to him to get something out of him; hasn’t he learned by now not to get his hopes up? “You’re just like everyone else.”

Emori sits like stone, unmoving. Her face doesn’t even twitch at the words. “Where is the Flame?” Her voice is flat and cold in a way it wasn’t before. She’s a good actress, he’ll give her that much. 

“Yeah, that information will cost you,” he says dryly.

“I have a gun pointed at your balls right now,” Emori says, and Murphy hears the click of gun under the table to confirm her statement. “So, if you don’t tell me, it will cost  _ you _ .”

They stare each other down. Murphy can admit to himself that if he weren’t the one with his dick currently in jeopardy, he’d be impressed. Pretty and lethal – and probably not at all scared to pull the trigger.

“Your friend –“

“Acquaintance,” Emori corrects forcefully.

Murphy tries to keep himself from rolling his eyes, but only because he’s afraid to piss her off. “Your acquaintance is wrong. I don’t know where the Flame is.” Emori’s eyes narrow. Before she can make good on her threat, he adds, “I’m pretty sure it’s not even real.”

“He was pretty convinced it’s real.” The expressionless façade shatters as she gives him a sarcastic grin, and for the first time he can see more than anger or determination in her eyes. She looks desperate. Maybe even scared.

“It’s a myth,” he explains. “Like a – like a fucking pirate treasure. Has a goddamn treasure map and everything.”

That seems to trip her up. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve seen it. Look, you want my advice?” he asks as he leans forward. Emori eyes him distrustfully and doesn’t answer. Frankly, he doesn’t blame her. He wouldn’t trust the advice of anyone in this place either. “You want money? Stick to petty theft. No matter how valuable this thing is, it can’t be worth the trouble to find it.”

The desperation he saw earlier is clear on her face now. “It is to me,” she says. Her voice wavers as she speaks. “I need you to take me to the map.”

He snorts. “Yeah, no thanks.”

Something cold and hard bumps against the zipper of his pants. Emori’s eyes are cold. The threat is clear.

“Take me to the map or lose your junk. Your choice.”

Murphy hesitates. “Why the hell do you want to see it? I just told you I don’t think the Flame is even real.”

Emori clenches her teeth. She eyes him carefully, and he can read the indecision in her eyes. Finally, she says quietly, “The acquaintance I mentioned – my brother and I used to be a part of his gang, but we ran.” She doesn’t need to go into detail for him to understand the severity of that. “He found us. Ambushed us in our hotel. I have to bring him the Flame or he’ll kill my brother.”

Her voice trembles as she talks, and her eyes grow glassy, but she blinks to clear them. She’s either a better liar than he thought, or she’s telling the truth – and since she has the upper hand here, there isn’t much reason for her to invent a sob story.

Murphy weighs his choices. He could tell her to fuck off and possibly lose his dick in the process, or he can help her out – and maybe, he realizes, even get something in return.

He leans forward and looks Emori in the eye. “The stories say that the Flame is hidden in the ancient, lost city of Polis. A woman named Ontari hired me and a friend of mine to take her to the ruins of an old village connected to the stories. We went, found an underground bunker. On a wall there was a map to Polis. Ontari shot my friend to keep us from telling anyone. She would have shot me if I hadn’t gotten away first.”

She holds his gaze as he takes a sip of his beer. He has her attention. “Ontari also really, really wants the Flame. So if I can fuck up her day by helping you get to it first?” He grins. It’s sharp and mean. “I’m in. I’ll take you to the map.”

He holds out a hand. Emori grabs it in her own and shakes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The classic action movie reference in this one wasn't so much hidden as it was thrown in your face - but I really like the idea that both Emori and Murphy have seen The Mummy enough to quote it.


	4. The Village

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a lot longer than the others - which hopefully makes up for the wait between chapters!
> 
>  
> 
> as usual, all my love to infernalandmortal for editing and screaming about headcanons and story ideas with me

**Chapter Four: The Village**

 

 

They leave Emori’s car in The Dead Zone’s parking lot. She feels very little remorse to see it go, even if she knows it will probably get stolen in a couple of days. It wasn’t hers in the first place. She’d jacked it from a Walmart parking lot a week ago, too scared to keep driving the car Baylis probably had tabs on, just in case he came knocking before she had what he wanted. It’s easy to move her things from the car to John’s truck – everything she owns is packed up in one weathered backpack.

John’s truck is just as worn as her backpack is. She can see the years in the dents and scratches and the hole-ridden patchwork of the passenger seat. She can’t help but wonder if he’d actually paid for it, or if it’s only as much his as the car was hers.

The atmosphere is uneasy between them as they pull away from the bar. Emori’s every sense is on high alert. She keeps her pistol in easy reach and her hand on her bag, ready to jump out the door at a moment’s notice if she needs to, like she’s seen happen in movies. She knows she won’t land as easily and safely as those movies portray – that an exit out that way would probably lead to some broken bones, at the very least – but if John turns on her, she’s ready to risk it. She’s had enough bad experiences with angry men to be more wary of them than of a bad fall.

But John doesn’t seem as angry with her as he was before. He certainly doesn’t trust her – he glances at her, and her pistol, frequently out of the corner of his eye as he drives – but he seems to have accepted her motivations, and his offer to help her sounded sincere – or at the very least, his was honest about his desire for revenge.

Emori understands revenge – intimately and easily. In fact, it makes his offer easier to swallow; she’d be far more wary if he’d offered to help just out of the kindness of his own heart. Revenge, she can trust. Kindness, she can’t.

They decide to stop at a nearby motel for the night and start the drive to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the morning – it’ll take them about four hours, according to John. The place he picks looks decrepit and uninviting, well on its way to becoming ruins like the ones they’re going to seek out tomorrow. The “Open” sign flickers sporadically; the written sign outside is missing letters. Emori feels right at home as they walk inside, familiar with the smoky smell of cigarettes that never quite leaves places like this and the ugly, patterned wallpaper. Her brother and her grew up in shitty motels just like this one.

The man behind the counter is watching a sitcom on his phone; the phony laugh track spills out into the lobby. He looks up as they enter and sets his phone down, but doesn’t turn it off, and the stilted, awkward sound of scripted dialogue continues on in the background as John asks him for a room.

“Two,” Emori interjects quickly. When John glances at her and raises an eyebrow, she adds, “I’ll pay for my own.”

He shrugs. His eyes say,  _ I don’t trust you either. _

The man behind the counter looks like he couldn’t care less what they do; his eyes keep drifting back to his phone. Emori pulls a wrinkled wad of cash out of her backpack and carefully counts out the right amount, noticing with slight worry that she only has $11 left – and the bit of change rattling around in the bottom of the bag. She hasn’t been able to make up for the cash Baylis took from her; she’ll have to get more soon.

They’re given two adjacent rooms on the second floor. They’re silent as they head up the elevator, silent as they walk down the hall, and then silent and awkward as they reach their rooms – as if they feel they should say something to each other, but can’t imagine what it would be.

It’s John who breaks the silence. “Meet me at 8?”

Emori nods. “8.”

They stare at each other for a moment longer, then disappear into their rooms without another word. Emori locks the door behind her, turns the deadbolt, and secures the chain. She’s tempted to move the dresser in front, too, just to be safe, but refrains.

It’s hard to go to sleep alone. Emori tosses and turns fitfully, just as she has for the past few days. Her thoughts turn once more to Otan. Is he okay? Is Baylis keeping his promise? Or was this whole treasure hunt some kind of fucked up revenge to watch her squirm? Will she ever see her brother again?

“Stop,” she commands herself angrily, rubbing at the tears on her cheeks. It’s no use crying. Tears won’t keep Otan safe. She has a lead now – she has John – and that’s more hope than she had before.

 

* * *

 

Murphy wakes up to the sound of someone banging on his door. He groans and rolls away from it, grabbing a spare pillow to shove over his face. He’s just drifting off once more when the banging comes again, loud and insistent.

“I’m coming!” he shouts, stumbling out of bed. On the way, he grabs the t-shirt he threw on the dresser yesterday and shrugs it on, but doesn’t bother throwing pants on over his boxers before he opens the door.

It’s Emori. She’s holding a drink carrier with two coffees, has her ratty backpack slung over her shoulder, and is completely dressed and ready for the day.

“It’s 8:15,” she tells him, glancing first at his bedhead and then at his boxers.

“What?” His mind hasn’t quite escaped the heavy grasp of sleep, and he struggles to puzzle out her greeting.

“We said we were meeting at 8,” she reminds him.

“Oh. Right.” He must have slept through his alarm – or he forgot to set one in the first place. Either is likely. He stands aside and gestures towards his room. “Just give me a minute to get ready. You can wait in here.”

She slips past him and takes a seat on top of the desk in the corner, setting her coffees to the side. “I got you a coffee,” she tells him as she picks one up and blows into the lid before taking a sip. She grimaces, then pulls a packet of sugar from her pocket and dumps it in.

“Thanks,” he says as he searches for where he tossed his jeans the night before.

He finds them on the floor and tugs them on, glancing at Emori out of the corner of his eye, who looks content to sit and drink her coffee as she stares into space. The sunlight filtering in through the window behind her crafts a halo around her head. She really is pretty, he thinks again – pretty in a natural, rugged sort of way, with her square jaw and her messy ponytail and her oversized army jacket full of rips and patches. The early morning light throws the cut on her cheek into sharp focus; it looks nastier now that he can see it clearly, the blue stitches uneven and clearly done by an unpracticed hand, the skin puckered and pink. He wonders if she did it herself.

“That’s a nasty cut,” he says.

Emori startles, nearly spilling her coffee, and snaps back into the room from wherever her mind had disappeared to. “What?” she asks, licking the drops of coffee that had spilled off of her hand and the side of the cup.

“The cut on your cheek,” he clarifies. “Looks painful.”

“Oh.” The hand not holding her coffee drifts up to prod gently at the stitches. Like it was in the bar, her hand is covered with a black, oversized glove that seems to fit oddly. It looks longer than it should, like the fingers underneath are stretched. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t.

“It was,” Emori says absently. Her gaze drifts back towards the wall.

“You stitch it up yourself?” he asks as he digs a new shirt out of his bag and trades it out for the one he’s wearing.

“Yes.”

He whistles out a note, impressed. “Badass.”

Emori snorts. When he glances at her over his shoulder, he sees her roll her eyes at the compliment. “Practical,” she argues. “Cheap.”

Murphy shrugs and lets it go.

 

* * *

 

They’re on the road by 8:45 am. Emori fiddles with the radio, listening to each channel for a couple seconds before vetoing it and moving on. Murphy lets her, happy to drink the shitty coffee she bought him and try to wake himself up fully.

Eventually, she settles on some kind of indie rock station and sits back to stare out the window. A few minutes pass in silence, before she sits up with a soft, “Oh,” and pulls her bag up into her lap. She digs through it until she finds two Pop-Tart packets and hands one to him. “I got us breakfast.”

He drops it into his lap. “Thanks.” He studies her as she opens her own packet and starts eating, not quite sure what to make of her. It’s not like they’re friends; there wasn’t any reason for her to buy him coffee and breakfast this morning, and he’s not quite sure why she had – unless, he figures, she’s trying to butter him up to make sure he really takes her to the map.

He wasn’t joking about wanting revenge on Ontari. His days of wanting the Flame for himself might be over, but he’d do almost anything to keep that bitch from getting just want she wanted. And to be honest, if only with himself, Murphy’s not entirely unsympathetic to Emori’s problem. He doesn’t have any siblings, but he figures if he did, he’d probably blow off some stranger’s junk to save their life. Maybe – the closest thing he’d ever really had to a sibling hasn’t spoken to him in years, so it’s a little hard to imagine what that kind of bond is like.

“So how’d you know about the Flame, anyways?” Emori asks, interrupting his thoughts. “I tried to look it up but couldn’t find anything.”

“I used to have this partner who was obsessed with it,” he answers, then opens up his own Pop-Tart with his teeth and takes a huge bite of it. “Well,” he adds around the food in his mouth, “he was obsessed with Polis, the lost city it’s supposed to be in.”

“Right, Polis,” Emori says. “All I could find on that was that it was some lost, legendary city like Atlantis.”

“Pretty much. It was the capital city of the Kyongeda people a couple centuries ago. Then it disappeared, super valuable jewel and all.”

“And that’s…real?” Emori says slowly. She sounds like she’s having trouble believing it, and he doesn’t blame her. It sounds silly to him now; it hadn’t when he’d been a teenager.

“I told you I don’t know. The Kyongeda were real, at least. The city and the Flame? Who knows.”

“But you tried to find it,” Emori presses.

“Well, yeah. He was obsessed with being some great explorer or something. I just wanted to find the Flame.” He glances over at her, and she raises her eyebrow in a silent question. “It was supposed to be a super valuable jewel that was worth a shit ton. To a kid who grew up without enough to eat, that sounded pretty good to me.”

Emori’s lips quirk at that. It’s not quite pity – more like understanding. “How’d your partner even hear about it?”

“He had this neighbor growing up who was descended from the Kyongeda – that’s how we knew they were real,” he clarifies. “And her family passed on all these stories. She used to tell them to him when he was young. Must have knocked a screw loose or something,” he snorts.

“So why’d you stop looking for it?”

Murphy shrugs as he takes a sip of his coffee. “Couldn’t find it. Decided I wasn’t going to waste my life searching for it if it wasn’t ever gonna pay off – and I found easier ways to make money.” He glances over at her again, studying her. “Okay, my turn. Why’d you try and run from a gang?”

“No,” Emori says, shutting him down immediately.

“What?” he asks, more than a little annoyed. “I just shared my life story with you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she argues, twisting the empty plastic Pop-Tart wrapping in her hands. It crackles as she does so. “You told me about the Flame because that’s all I need to know about you. And you don’t need to know about me.”

The easy atmosphere that had started filling the car disappears instantly with her words.

Murphy isn’t quite sure if he’s insulted or if he agrees with her, but he shuts up and turns back to the road. Emori turns the radio up louder to drown out the silence, but it doesn’t clear the awkward tension that’s settled between them. It feels like the car trip with Ontari all over again.

It’s a long four hours.

 

* * *

 

It’s about mid-afternoon when they enter the clearing of the village.

“This is it?” Emori asks, glancing around.

“This is it,” Murphy confirms, dropping the large backpack full of gear he’d brought with them. This time, he’s a little more prepared.

The bunker entrance is shut again, and it looks like Ontari attempted to cover it with brush and leaves before she left, in case anyone else stumbled upon it. Murphy clears the brush away. Emori steps up next to him and reaches out a hand to trace the engraved infinity symbol.

“We don’t have the key,” she says.

“I’ve got something better,” Murphy tells her. He pulls three sticks of dynamite out of the backpack and holds them up. “Gifts from a friend,” he explains as he places them around the metal cover and runs the lines far enough away to be safe. Emori quickly gets out of range behind him.

The explosion is loud in the quiet mountain forest. Murphy hopes no mountain patrol or law enforcement comes looking for the source of the disturbance until they’re gone. The smoke clears to reveal that the metal covering of the bunker is gone. All that’s left is a hole in the dirt, and the warped metal hinges that held it in place. The rotting rope ladder is gone, too, likely blown to pieces and scattered on the bunker floor.

Emori makes her way to the edge and looks down into the bunker while Murphy grabs a rope from his bag. He secures it to a tree on the edge of the clearing, checks the knot, and hands the other end to Emori. “Ladies first,” he says, gesturing towards the hole.

Emori looks at the rope uneasily. He’s not sure what she’s thinking, and he’s about to assure her there’s nothing dangerous lying in wait for her at the bottom – unless Ontari never left, that is – when she wraps the rope around her waist, ties a complicated looking knot, and lowers herself into the hole much like how a mountain climber would descend from a peak. Its slow going, but eventually he sees her set foot on the floor and untie her weird rope swing. She gives a tug on the rope to signal he’s good to come down and then disappears out of sight.

Murphy’s method of getting down isn’t nearly as complicated, though it does give him a bit more rope burn along his palms, and he can’t help but think Emori might have been smarter than him as he comes to a stop – but then a terrible stench assaults his nostrils, and he forgets the sting in his hands completely.

He throws an arm up over his face and tries to block the smell with his jacket, but it slips in through the cracks and makes his head spin with how thick and putrid it is. It’s like rotting food, but heavier, worse, and overpowering. He casts his eyes around frantically for a source and spots Emori staring at something on the floor a couple meters away from where she stands. She has her gloved hand held securely over her own face.

“What’s that smell?” he asks through his jacket sleeve.

Emori turns towards him, and, in doing so, reveals the thing she had been staring at it. Even from this distance, it’s very clearly a body, lying face first on the ground and motionless. His stomach twists – not just from the nausea of smelling what he now knows is decomposing flesh, but with the horrible certainty that he knows exactly who that is – or had been, rather. He’d known that his partner had been killed in here, had heard the gunshot as he searched for the camera up above and put the pieces together easily, but he hadn’t actually confronted the possibility of finding his body. But of course Onari left it here for the bugs and rats to chew on – no grave, no marker.

He feels a new burst of hatred for her.

“Your partner?” Emori asks, walking towards him. Her eyes keep flicking off the side, back towards the corpse, and then away again, unsettled.

“Shit,” Murphy breathes. “Yeah.” The smell grows worse the closer he gets, but he can’t stop himself from stepping closer to stare down at what’s become of the guy he’d known for only a couple months, but had managed to trust enough to have his back. Too bad he couldn’t have done the same for him when he needed it. Murphy tries to shake the guilt off at that thought, but it hangs on, stubborn and small. “Poor son of a bitch.”

“What was his name?”

“Mbege.” He stares at the body for a moment longer, eyes stinging at the stench, stomach churning at all of it, then drags himself away. There was a reason they came here. “Anyways, it’s – FUCK.”

Emori jumps at his sudden shout. “What?!”

Murphy can’t respond. His mouth works open and closed in a litany of silent curses as he stares at the wall where the map had once been – a wall now covered completely in an uneven, hasty layer of black paint.

Ontari.

“She destroyed it!” he yells, gesturing wildly towards the wall. Underneath the uneven black, he can still see some of the lines that made up the original painting. The red woman is only half-destroyed, the top half of her emerging from the black around her like an ominous specter. “It’s gone.”

“It’s gone?” Emori repeats, dumbfounded.

“That  _ bitch _ ,” he hisses. Underneath his anger and defeat, he knows he would have done the exact same thing – if Ontari wanted the Flame that badly, wiping out the competition was a smart move – but it’s just one more time she’s screwed him over, and his hatred for her burns hot in his chest.

And then exhaustion and resignation smothers the flame, and the hatred fizzles out. “Looks like this is the end of the road for us.” Emori whips her eyes away from the wall to stare at him in shock. Her eyes are wide – she looks softer that way, more innocent. “Sorry,” he tells her, and it’s almost completely sincere. “Did my best.”

“No,” Emori argues. She loses the innocent shock in her face, grows cold and hard, eyes shuttering closed and hiding the vulnerability buried beneath. He remembers the gun she carries on her and absently wonders if she’ll use it on him. After all, she has no more use for him – will his body end up lost and forgotten beside his partner’s?

“This can’t be it,” Emori says. “Don’t you know something more?”

“I don’t,” Murphy answers, calm in the face of her desperation. He watches her stomp towards a pile of items, knocking things over in a wild, careless search for something,  _ anything _ to help her. He’s reminded of Ontari. “We’ve already looked here – our only lead was the map, and it’s gone.”

Emori’s eyes are burning when she turns to face him. “Then don’t you remember anything else? Or your partner! The one who told you about Polis – can’t we ask him?” She’s grasping at things to keep herself from spiraling, watching him expectantly.

“This is all we ever found. He doesn’t know anything more than me. Besides, trust me, there’s no way in hell I’m going to talk to him,” he says. The sound she makes at those words almost doesn’t sound human. It sounds like an animal in pain.

“You’re just going to give up?!” she shouts. Her words echo back at them from the walls. “What about your revenge? Don’t you want to get back at Ontari? What about him?!” she gestures at Mbege’s body. “You aren’t going to avenge him?!”

Murphy sees red. “Listen,” he growls. His voice is low, but heavy with anger. “I spent four years of my life following dead ends and false clues, okay? It’s a fairy tale. It isn’t real – or it is, but we’re never going to find it, because Ontari got here first and fucked us over, okay? Sorry about your brother, but I’m done. Every time I go looking for this stupid fucking city, I get screwed. I’ve had enough.”

Emori doesn’t have a response ready when he stops talking. He sees her jaw working, clenching and unclenching. Her hand, the one he can see, is a tight fist at her side, shaking. “Fine,” she says, finally, the word exploding out of her. “I’ll find it myself.”

She turns her back to him, but she doesn’t reach for her gun. She doesn’t point it at him. He doesn’t fall beside his partner. She isn’t much like Ontari after all.

Doesn’t mean he’s going to stick around. He’s done with this place, with this silly story he held onto and followed for years only to come up with nothing.

But there’s something he needs to do before he leaves.

It doesn’t take him long to climb back out of the bunker. He feels a sense of deja-vu as he goes for his bag and the supplies he brought, half-expects to hear a gunshot sound below him but never does. He gets what he needs and drops back down into the hole. Emori startles at his arrival, glancing at him, before huffing and turning away.

Murphy ignores her. He takes the spare cloth he pulled from his bag and ties it securely around his face – it doesn’t do much to block the smell, but it’s better than nothing – and then he takes the lighter fluid he brought along with the explosives and starts coating Mbege’s body with it. He can’t give him a proper burial, but at least burning the body seems a little better than leaving it to be devoured by nature. He feels Emori watching him as he works, but she never speaks, and eventually her eyes leave his back.

As he sets the empty can aside and reaches for his lighter, Emori breaks the silence. “John?” He pauses, but doesn’t turn to look at her.  “I think there’s another door here.”

That gets his attention. Murphy shoves the lighter back into his pocket and hurries to where Emori stands, un-gloved hand pressed against what looks like a solid wall in front of her. As he approaches, Emori tries to push against it, but it doesn’t give.

“You sure?” He can’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. Emori turns to glare at him.

“There’s a spot for a key,” she argues, and, sure enough, when she moves out of the way, he sees the familiar infinity symbol set inside the metal. It’s engraved into a small metal disc that sits atop the metal wall almost like a doorknob. Murphy reaches a hand forward and runs a finger over the engraving.

When he looks up, Emori’s staring at him expectantly. Her eyes are light; he thinks maybe there’s hope inside them again, and it makes her whole face glow brighter. There’s a grin working its way along her lips. She raises an eyebrow expectantly at him. “You have any more explosives?”

The grin is contagious. He feels one pulling at his own lips. “I have a few more.”

It doesn’t take long to get the explosives and lay them along the door. Murphy’s lays only one, slightly worried about how well trying to blow up the wall of an underground bunker will go – getting buried alive sounds like a terrible way to go out.

He looks at Emori standing beside him before he sets the explosion off and catches himself studying her for a just a moment. There’s a powerful determination in her – he’d seen it before in the bar when she held a gun at him, and he sees it now as she stares expectantly at the door. He thinks that if blowing it up doesn’t work, she might just try to tear the door off its hinges with brute strength alone.

He thinks he likes that about her.

And then he shakes it off and looks back at the door that just might open up onto a new clue and hits the button.

The explosion is loud in the small space, echoing off the walls and buffeting their ears with a cacophony of noises, but the bunker holds. The door does not – it doesn’t open, but the explosive blows through an entire half of it, carving out a wide enough gap that they should be able to squeeze themselves through. And sure enough, through the gap left, Murphy can see that the bunker keeps going.

They nearly trip themselves running to the opening. Emori shines her light through, but it’s hard to see anything in the heavy darkness. It looks like a hallway, but they won’t know more until they actually step inside. They share a look of anticipation, then Emori shrugs to herself and squeezes herself through the gap. Murphy follows closely behind.

Once through, he turns his flashlight into the hallway and tries to make out the space around them. Beside him, Emori throws hers left and right, catching only bare walls and a few startled, angry rats in the beam. The space around them is completely bare, but the hallway continues on ahead of them into the darkness. There’s nothing to do but keep going – so they do.

“What the hell is this even for, you think?” Murphy asks after a couple minutes of silent walking. He thinks he sees Emori shrug, but it’s hard to see her clearly unless he points his flashlight directly at her.

She pauses suddenly, then moves towards the wall. When Murphy turns his light to follow her, he sees that the walls around them have changed. No longer are they completely bare – now, there are holes dug into the walls to create shelves, and several larges shapes wrapped in what looks like cloth are packed into them. Emori reaches a hand in, then, face twisting with displeasure, pulls it out again quickly. “It’s a skeleton,” she explains. Murphy shines his light along the rest of the wall; the shapes – the bodies, he guesses – fill the walls as far as he can see. “It’s a catacomb.”

“Guess it’s not a treasure hunt without some skeletons,” he says dryly. Emori snorts; it’s nearly a laugh.

“Why would they stick it behind a locked door, though?” Emori wonders, shining her light curiously along the wall of ancient bodies.

Murphy shrugs. “Well, they had a bunker buried underneath their city. They seem pretty paranoid.”

This time Emori does laugh.

As they walk, the amount of bodies around them gradually tapers off, until they disappear completely, the later shelves sitting empty and waiting. Eventually, they reach the end of the tunnel and stop to marvel at what they find. At the end of the catacomb sits a very special grave, not set aside in the walls beside the others, but placed in the center in a large obsidian sarcophagus. There are paintings on the wall behind it similar to the mural that had been beside the map.

Murphy lets out a low whistle. “That looks important,” he says.

“Sure does,” Emori agrees.

They step closer at the same time. Their flashlights bounce off the sarcophagus’s glossy surface. Engraved on the top, sitting prominently in the center of the stone, is the now very familiar infinity symbol.

It’s as ominous as it is exciting. Murphy feels his heart skip a beat. His skin buzzes with anticipation.

Emori lays a hand on the sarcophagus lid, then hesitates.

“What’s the matter?” Murphy asks her. “Not okay with a little grave robbing?”

Before he’s even finished talking, Emori puts both hands on the sarcophagus lid and pushes as hard as she can – it comes off easier than she expects. She loses her balance, tipping forward with the movement, and ends up half-inside the sarcophagus. The lid crashes to the ground with an enormous clatter, shards of glossy stone scattering across the floor.

Murphy shines his light on Emori and catches her disgusted grimace as she pulls herself off the skeleton she’d nearly crushed. Once she’s upright again, she brushes the dust and decay off herself. “Smooth,” he says with a laugh, and Emori levels him with a glare.

“Shut up.”

The skeleton laying inside the sarcophagus is dressed in faded red robes that have nearly been lost completely to the passage of time. There are gold bands scattered around the skull without any obvious purpose. Murphy pulls one out to examine it. As far as he can tell, it’s real gold. He stuffs it in his pocket and reaches for the others.

Emori catches his hand in midair.

“What?” he gripes. “We’re already grave robbing.”

“I’m not stopping you,” Emori says. “But we found it together – we’re splitting them.”

He considers that, then nods, and they each grab a handful of the gold rings before turning to examine the rest of the body. As far as Murphy can tell, there isn’t much else of worth buried with the body. The only other thing in the grave is what looks like an old, worn book covered in a thick layer of dust, sitting securing beneath the skeleton’s crossed arms.

Emori pulls the book free – the skeleton gives it up easily it. 

Every page is filled with writing in a foreign language. About halfway through, Emori opens on a page with a carefully and intricately drawn map. An infinity symbol marks a specific location.

Murphy recognizes immediately as the same map drawn on the bunker wall.

“Is this – “ Emori says, but she can’t seem to finish her sentence, voice strangled by cautious hope.

“Polis,” Murphy finishes for her. “Fuck, it is.”

Emori quickly flips through the next few pages. “I think there’s actually instructions, too. Not just the map – this is – John.” She snaps the book shut and holds it up. “This has instructions to Polis. This is what we need.”

_ This is what you need, _ he considers saying. He got her to the bunker. He got her to a new map. He’s done his part of the deal; there’s no obligation to stick with her to see this through.

And yet, he realizes he doesn’t want to just leave now and never know if this place is actually real. He doesn’t want to wonder if Emori ever actually found it. 

He thinks of Mbege’s decaying body back in the main room – he thinks of Ontari screwing them over. He imagines the satisfaction he’d feel if he saw Emori get this jewel before Ontari ever sees it.

There’s no way he’s backing out now.

Emori hasn’t noticed his silence. She’s looking through the book again, studying it closely. “I don’t recognize the language.”

“It’s in Trig,” he says.

“It’s in what?” she asks, looking up at him.

“Trigedasleng. The Kyongeda language.”

“Do you speak it?”

“No,” he says, and her face falls. “But I know someone who does.” Sighing deeply, he runs his hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

Emori’s eyebrows pinch together. “What?”

“Looks like we’re going to talk to my old partner after all.”


	5. An Old Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally come off hiatus to post a new chapter. I apologize for the wait, but rest assured - this fic is not abandoned and I have no plans to abandon it any time soon.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the wonderful comments! I'm sorry if I haven't replied to you yet, but I really do appreciate every single comment, and I'm so glad that people are enjoying this story! Thanks so much for reading!

**Chapter Five: An Old Friend**

Emori drifts awake to the feeling of the car stopping. It idles for a few minutes as she slowly gains awareness, then pushes forward again. Slowly, blinking the hazy fog of interrupted sleep away, she sits up. Her neck aches from laying against the window; she twists her head back and forth, stretching the screaming muscles. Her mouth tastes like cotton. She licks at her chapped lips. They’re dry and cracking down the middle, but she used up the last of her chapstick the other day, so she resigns herself to living with it.

“We almost there?” Her voice comes out hoarse. She coughs to clear her throat.

“Almost,” John answers. Emori feels his eyes flick away from the road to look at her and wonders absently what he sees. She must look far less appealing than she had when she’d tried to seduce him in the bar, half-asleep and rumpled, hair spilling out of its braid and hanging in tangles around her face, sticking to the sweat on her neck and forehead. There’s some drool drying on her cheek, and she scrubs at it with her glove.  _ This is me _ , she’s tempted to say.  _ Take it in. _

John pulls the car onto a college campus, and Emori sits up to look out the window. Students walk to their classes. She studies them curiously as they pass. It’s hard to picture the lives they must lead. Where her backpack holds her entire life – food, clothes, a fake passport, a switchblade – she imagines theirs must only have books and homework. They probably don’t keep a wad of cash tucked into their sock, either.

The campus is like something out of a movie – picturesque and unfamiliar. The buildings are old, but well-maintained, with no broken windows or graffiti in sight. The lawns are a vivid green and well-kept, freshly mowed. Flowers line the paths with little bursts of cheery colors.

It’s completely alien to her.

John is silent beside her as he drives. Emori glances at him out of the corner of her eye. She might be imagining things, but he seems tenser than usual, and she can’t help but wonder the reason. The person they’re going to meet or the location? Does he feel as out of place here as she does? Has he ever lived this life, where you carry books instead of weapons?

Curious as she is, she doesn’t ask. She’d been the one to insist they stay strangers to each other, after all, and she doubts he’d appreciate the prying. She wouldn’t, if he asked her.

Before she can think of another comment to break the awkward silence that’s settled, John pulls into a parking spot and turns the car off. As they get out, Emori studies the building in front of her. It’s large, but inviting, made up of red bricks and big windows. “Visitor Center” reads the sign above the entrance.

“Come on,” John says as he starts forward, and Emori follows closely behind him.

Directly inside is a large reception desk. Behind it sits a young woman dressed in a gray t-shirt with the university’s logo, typing away on a laptop. She gives them a bright smile as they enter. “Hi! How can I help you?”

John strolls up to the desk and drapes himself across it, leaning forward on his elbows. His foot taps out an anxious beat against the tile floor. “I’m looking for a professor I’m supposed to meet with,” he lies.

“Okay,” the woman replies, almost sickeningly sweet. Emori can’t tell if her cheeriness is sincere or not. “What’s the name?”

“Bellamy Blake.” John looks even more agitated after saying the name, though he does a decent job of hiding it. Still, Emori can easily see the tension in his shoulders and neck from where she stands behind him.

If the woman also notices, she doesn’t mention it as she turns to her laptop and starts typing. “Looks like he has a class right now,” she informs them. “I could tell you where his office is. When were you supposed to meet him?”

“Can you just tell me where the class is? I just, uh,” John fumbles. His tapping foot picks up its tempo. He’s not very good at this, Emori observes – lying. She’d jump in to save him if she had any idea how colleges worked. Unfortunately, he’s on his own this time.

“I’m interested in taking a class of his, but I want to watch to see his, uh – to see the way he teaches,” John settles on. “To see if it’s right for me, you know?”

“Sure,” the girl says, swallowing the lie easily. “I completely get it. Looks like it’s a lecture hall, so you should have no problem sitting in.”

 

She’s so naïve, Emori thinks. Naïve and saccharine. She kind of wants to dislike her but can’t quite bring herself to. Distantly, she feels the familiar pangs of jealousy for a life she’s never lived.

The girl gives them the name of the lecture hall, then a campus map when John admits he doesn’t know where that is, and circles the visitor hall and their destination with a bright pink pen. She waves goodbye to them as they leave. Emori forces herself to wave back.

The visitor center isn’t far from the lecture hall, so it doesn’t take them long to walk there. John is a silent rain cloud beside her, his gloomy mood almost tangible. It clashes terribly with the cheeriness of the campus around them. His foul mood only makes her more curious about his mysterious former partner. There’s history here – something more personal than just someone he’d worked with in the past. An ex, maybe? She doesn’t dare ask.

Like the girl said, it’s easy to sneak into the back of the lecture hall. They find seats in the back corner and settle in to wait.

The man at the front of the class isn’t much older than she or John are, and if he really is an old flame, John has good taste – he’s incredibly attractive, tall and tan, with a beard, and a mess of dark curls. He teaches passionately and with a lot of movement. It takes her a moment to figure out what he’s even teaching because he talks so quickly, gesturing broadly at the pictures on the screen behind him. History, she realizes. Of course.

They listen to him talk for the last ten minutes of the lecture, though Emori struggles to really follow any of it. She keeps getting distracted by John beside her, who can’t seem to sit still. He fidgets, settling into one position only to change it moments later, tapping his fingers against his knee, then against the armrest. His knee is bouncing so hard she can feel the vibrations through where their seats connect. He’s nervous and doing a terrible job of hiding it.

_ Old flame for sure _ , Emori decides.

The man – Bellamy, she guesses – finally dismisses the class with a reminder about his office hours, then waits at the front as a small group of students lines up in front of him to ask questions. John and Emori slip into the back of the line, waiting patiently as the man answers question after question with the same enthusiasm he had taught the lesson with. He seems nice – harmless, too – but John looks almost physically ill as they grow closer to him.

The student in front of them gets their answer, and as soon as she walks away, Bellamy sees John standing in her place. He drops the folder he’s holding. It hits the edge of the desk on its way to the floor, and the papers inside go everywhere, but Bellamy doesn’t even glance at them, staring dumbstruck at John. John rubs roughly at his nose – a nervous tick that Emori’s picked up on by now.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, John opens his mouth to say something. Bellamy beats him to it. “No.” His voice is harsh. All the earlier cheer and enthusiasm is gone. “I don’t care what the job is. I’m out.”

“Hello to you, too, Bellamy,” John says dryly, and Bellamy huffs out a noise that’s far too bitter to be a laugh. “And I already know you’re out,” he adds, his own bitterness leaking into his voice. “You made that pretty clear last time when you – “

“Why are you here then?” Bellamy cuts him off. He starts gathering his papers together, likely an excuse not to look at John, stuffing them into his bag with far more force than necessary.

“Because I found Polis.”

It’s amazing how quickly Bellamy shifts from a tornado of angry energy to a statue. He sets the bag and the loose papers gathered in his hands down gently on the podium in front of him, then turns to look John in the eye. There’s something like cautious hope blooming on his face. It pushes the anger aside. “You found Polis?” he asks softly.

John opens his mouth, chokes on the half-lie, and closes it again. He shrugs, stuffs his hands in his pockets and shifts from one foot to the other. “Well – I found a map.” He turns to look at Emori expectantly. She fumbles her backpack open and pulls the journal free, handing it over to him. Bellamy stares at it like a hungry animal as John opens to the right page.

“You found a map,” Bellamy repeats dumbly. John hands the journal over to him, and Bellamy holds it reverently as he stares at it. He lifts a hand to trace lightly over the drawing. “You found a  **map** ,” he repeats again, like his brain has gotten stuck on that and can’t move on.

“Can’t read any of it, though,” John explains. “Your girlfriend still speak Trig?”

That seems to snap Bellamy out of it. He closes the journal gently and looks up at John. “My wife,” he corrects.

John purses his lips. Something dark and mean falls over his face. “I didn’t get an invite to the wedding?” he asks. It sounds like he’s trying to make a joke, but his tone is too sharp.

Bellamy stiffens. “You were in prison,” he snaps.

“Yeah, and whose fault was that?” John snaps back, taking a step forward. His hands are fisted in his jacket, the knuckles white with strain, and Emori can see the fight brewing in the air. Bellamy might look the part of a respectable professor, but she gets the sense he’s about ready to start throwing punches.

“Can she translate the journal?” she asks Bellamy as calmly as she possibly can.

Bellamy’s eyes snap to her. It’s like he’s noticing her for the first time.

“I’m Emori,” she says before he can ask. She doesn’t offer her hand, but neither does he.

His eyes flick back to John’s. “New partner?” he asks. Emori’s not sure, but she thinks maybe there’s an insult hidden in there somewhere.

“For now,” John says, struggling to keep his voice even. “She hired me to find the Flame.”

Emori can’t read Bellamy’s reaction – if he’s mad or upset or uncaring. He still coiled tight like a spring waiting to be released, and his face still holds onto its anger, but she thinks there might be something else behind his eyes – hurt, maybe. Discomfort.

“Can Clarke translate it or not?” John asks. The cold edge of his voice makes Bellamy stiffen even further. Emori watches them losing the ground they’d gained when they brought out the map and considers her options.

There’s clearly a history here that turned ugly, and it’s turning John and Bellamy both ugly with it. Bellamy’s interest in the city might not be strong enough to make him willing to help John – but maybe, she thinks, he would be willing to help her.

 

* * *

 

 

She considers the enthusiasm and patience he’d shown the students asking him questions and what little she’s been able to observe of him in the past 20 minutes. Emori prides herself on reading people. Bellamy is a sincere person, not quite jaded like she and John are. He’s a professor, so he wants to help people, and he’d been patient and respectful and fully engaged in his students as they asked him question after question, because he cared enough to give them the right answer for their problem.

The best card to play with him is the truth.

“My brother is being held hostage by a very dangerous man who hates me very much,” Emori says, leaning hard into the emotions that confession stirs up. It’s easy to tell a sob story well when it’s true. She doesn’t even have to push herself to make the tears come or her voice stutter and crack.

Bellamy whips back to look at her. The sudden turn in the conversation has thrown him off balance. He looks both baffled and horrified all at once, and she knows she has his full attention now. Even John, who she can see out of the corner of her eye, is watching her curiously.

“He wants me to find the Flame – that’s why I found John. And we found the map, but we don’t know what it says. We need help.” She sees the rush of emotion over Bellamy’s face at that and knows it’s the right angle. “So, please, if your wife knows how to read this –“ She pauses to stifle a sob and isn’t quite sure whether It’s real or not. “ _ Please _ . It might be my only hope to see my brother alive again.”

She was right. Bellamy is a sincere person. He wears his every emotion openly on his face, and it’s easy to see her story has landed. His face twists with horror and sympathy. He eyes John, then her again, searching for a lie, but doesn’t find one.

He sighs. He finishes stuffing his paper into his binder, taking his time now to do it gently. Then he looks up at them. “She can translate it,” he admits.

Relief hits Emori fast and sudden, like a wave.

Bellamy cancels his last class for the day and gives them the address to his house. It’s about 20 minutes off campus, and it’s even more beautiful than the campus had been. The wood paneling is painted a light blue, the door is a deep red, and the hedges outside along the wall are perfectly trimmed and maintained. The grass is bright green and recently cut. There are flowers along the path leading up to the door.

Emori feels even more out of place following Bellamy into the house than she had felt in the visitor center. She wasn’t made for places like these; she isn’t quite sure how to tread them. For some reason, she feels almost guilty looking around at the house, as if it’s something she was never meant to see.

John doesn’t seem to have the same problem. He glances around curiously at everything he can see from where they stand in the entryway. If Emori feels like an intruder, she wonders how he feels – getting this rare access into a life that he was once a part of but is clearly no longer welcome in.

Bellamy stops in the entryway to shrug off his jacket, and Emori watches with bafflement as he hangs it on an honest-to-god coat hanger standing beside the door. For some reason, that’s the hardest detail of all for her to accept. She didn’t think anyone actually used coat hangers.

“You’re home early,” a female voice calls from a back room. Beside her, John grimaces.

“Something came up,” Bellamy answers.

There’s some clattering from the distance, and then a very pregnant woman emerges into the hallway. She’s dressed in ratty sweatpants and a stretched-out Mountaineers t-shirt that pulls tight around her stomach, and she’s covered in paint smudges. She has a spot of blue across one cheek and a bit clumped in some of her short, blonde hair.

She’s pretty, and all Emori can think is that she doesn’t see one single scar or blemish and that makes her fit so much better into this perfect, picturesque house than Emori ever could. Jealousy burns hot in her stomach.

The woman – Clarke, Emori distantly remembers John saying – halts the minute she sees John. Her pretty face twists with something that can only be defined as disgust. “Murphy,” she says tersely. The temperature in the room goes frigid.

“Princess,” John says, spitting the word like an insult. When Emori glances at him, he looks livid – angry in a way she’s never seen him. Not even in the bunker when they’d fought or when he’d seen what Ontari had done. “Still running your pretentious art gallery?”

Clarke’s mouth thins further. “Still peddling off fakes to pretentious art galleries?”

John takes a harsh step towards her and opens his mouth, and Emori braces herself for the impact because she knows something hard and angry is going to come out – but Bellamy grabs his shoulder roughly and yanks him back.

“If you insult my wife, I’m kicking your ass out of this house,” he growls.

Emori watches John visibly struggle to swallow whatever he was about to say.

“Bellamy, why the hell is he here?” Clarke demands.

“They need a favor,” Bellamy explains, and Clarke glances over at Emori for the first time. Emori wonders what she sees, if she knows as surely as Emori does that she doesn’t belong here.

Emori shrugs her backpack off and digs the journal out to hand to Clarke, who looks at it curiously. “Bellamy told us you can translate this,” she explains.

Clarke flips it open; as soon as she sees the writing inside, her eyebrows raise. She looks up at Emori in surprise. “Trigedasleng?” she asks. Emori nods. Something clicks into place behind Clarke’s eyes, and she looks sharply at John. “You’re trying to find that stupid city again,” she accuses, then turns to Bellamy. “That’s why you want to help him.”

“I want to help  _ Emori _ ,” Bellamy argues. “Trust me, she needs our help.”

Even though she’d used her story to get him to help, Emori still finds herself surprised that it’s actually working – but she supposes that Bellamy is the kind of person who lives in a nice house and knows nice, law-abiding, honest people and falls for sob stories.

Clarke locks eyes with him. Something passes back and forth between them in the silence of the hallway. Finally, Clarke sighs. “Alright. I’ll translate it for you.”

“Thank you,” Emori tells her, and she would hate the way her voice chokes up if she didn’t know it further helps her case. “How long will it take.”

Clarke thumbs through the journal. It’s fairly lengthy. “Probably all night. Maybe two days. I’m not sure. My Trig is a little rusty, to be honest.”

John takes a step backwards towards the door. His hands are shoved into his pockets, and his shoulders are hunched; he’s looked guarded ever since Bellamy reprimanded him, bunched in on himself like he’s trying to draw away from the situation as much as possible. “Great,” he says. “We’ll find a motel to stay the night in.”

“No,” Bellamy says, then his voice dies in his throat. He turns around and looks at John, and his face twists and scrunches like he’s warring with himself. He looks at Emori, and she can see him decide on something. “You guys can stay here. We have an extra room.” He doesn’t look at John as he says it, and Emori knows with certainty he’s only offering because of her.

Bellamy is very much the kind of person who falls for sob stories.

John tries to protest, but Emori quickly talks over him. “Thank you. We’ll stay out of your way.” She doesn’t have enough money to pay for another motel room.

John makes a noise that sounds like he’s being strangled. Everyone ignores him.

When Emori looks at Clarke, though, she looks just as displeased with the offer, glaring daggers into John over Bellamy’s shoulder. “I should go get started,” she says.  _ So you two can leave as quickly as possible _ goes unsaid, but easily understood by everyone. She disappears back into the room she came from.

Bellamy looks to Emori and gestures over his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you the guest room.”

Emori follows him as he leads her down the hallway towards the staircase, John trailing behind them. She can’t help but glance curiously into the room Clarke went into as they pass it, and she sees a bright and cheery art room lit by the massive windows on the far wall. It’s full of paintings and charcoal drawings. An unfinished painting of a panther sits on an easel in the middle of the room. Clarke is putting away the open paints beside it, and her rough, quick movements reveal her anger. Emori just hopes she translates the journal correctly and doesn’t half-ass the job because she doesn’t like John.

There are pictures along the hallway – the kind of pictures she’s seen in rom-coms caught on motel cable: Bellamy and Clarke in various locations, happy and smiling. They’re at a ski resort in one, a beach the next – each location nice and luxurious and clearly expensive.

The room Bellamy leads them to is just as nice – fully furnished with a queen bed topped with an excessive number of pillows. The backboard and matching dresser are carved from deep, rich-colored wood, and Emori knows the price tag for the set must have been at least four digits long. She wonders how soft the bed will feel. How nice it will smell. How unwilling she’ll be to leave it once they must.

If the rest of the house hadn’t already confirmed it, this does. Bellamy and Clarke are filthy, stinking rich. She tries not to let it color her opinion of them, but it does. On the bright side, though, there are plenty of nice things in this house she can easily slip into her pockets as she leaves, and she doubts Bellamy and Clarke will really miss them. She eyes the vase sitting on dresser speculatively.

John pushes past her to jump up onto the bed, settling in comfortably and crossing his dirty boots on the light gray comforter.

“Get your goddamned shoes off the bed,” Bellamy snaps. “You really have no respect for other people and their things, do you?”

John sits up and forcefully toes his boots off, letting them fall to the ground as he glares daggers at Bellamy. “What the hell are you playing at?” he snarls, gesturing around at them. “Living in this huge, fucking house with your fucking pointless, overpriced decorations and these freaking sheets worth more than any fucking sheets should be worth. Who even are you anymore?”

“You don’t get to come into my life that I’ve built and judge it,” Bellamy says angrily.

Emori silently moves further into the back corner, away from the shouting. She can’t leave the room because Bellamy’s blocking the doorway, but she desperately wants to. She didn’t sign up to get involved in John’s relationship problems.

“You’ve built?” John asks, then barks out a laugh. It’s not an attractive sound. “Funny way of saying you married rich.”

“The only reason you’re here is because I want to help her,” Bellamy growls, gesturing towards where Emori is trying her best to sink into the wall. Before John can even retort – though he’s certainly prepared to – Bellamy storms out of the room. They can hear his loud footsteps thudding back down the stairs, and then a muffled conversation between him and his wife that sounds suspiciously like an argument.

John remains tense on the bed, glaring at the empty doorframe. He grabs an overpriced pillow beside him and chucks it roughly across the room, where it miraculously manages not to hit anything. The act does little to calm him. If anything, he seems even more frustrated with the lack of destruction caused.

With a string of curses, he pushes himself off the bed and roughly shoves his boots back on. “I’m going for a walk,” he snaps in Emori’s general direction and heads for the door.

Emori doesn’t necessarily want to be near him while he’s like this – who’s to say he won’t take his anger out on her next? – but the thought of being left alone in this house she doesn’t belong in amongst strangers she can’t understand and who could never possibly understand her fills her with utter panic. She feels it creep across her skin – to her chest, to her throat, settling there so she can’t quite breathe around it.

She suddenly desperately wants John to stay despite his fury, so at least there’s one constant left she understands, but she doesn’t speak up quickly enough, and John is gone, thudding down the stairs after Bellamy. She hears the front door open and slam.

And then she’s left alone, and the too-nice walls of the too-nice room seem to close in around her.


End file.
